Rewrite That Witch
CH1414 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1414: Useless Person

Dusk was extraordinary. Not only because of her appearance — though her features were beautiful, as was common among Witches, that quality shared even by Balshan, whose cold expression somehow managed its own distinct kind of severity. The word ugly could not be made to stick to either of them, and Charms was not fool enough to say so within Balshan’s earshot.

But what set Dusk apart was not her face. It was everything else. Her happiness when things went well, unguarded and immediate. Her tears when things didn’t, shed without apology. She kept nothing behind glass. If the other women he’d known were presented in black and white, Dusk was red-orange — the exact color of her short, curly hair.

She was perfect.

Against her, Balshan suffered by comparison. Which was unfair, objectively, but Charms had never claimed to be objective where Dusk was concerned.

“Don’t think I’m unaware of what you’re planning.” He’d barely stepped into the plaza when he found Balshan waiting by the doorway, arms folded, watching him the way sentries watch gate traffic. “You do know we’re Witches.”

“Since the first day we met,” Charms replied.

“So you admit you’re thinking about something inappropriate.” One eyebrow went up.

“I don’t understand why you’d call it inappropriate. Dusk is wonderful. I don’t have any reason to want someone else with her.”

He would never have said it if Dusk were present. But Balshan had a way of provoking frankness — probably because she seemed to expect cowardice and he refused to give her the satisfaction.

She hadn’t expected it either. A brief silence followed, during which she appeared to recalibrate. “Wh — that’s not the point! She’s a Witch. You know what Witches cannot do.”

“So what.” Charms straightened and tapped the badge on his shirt — the war hero commendation, personally awarded by His Majesty. “I have an older brother to carry on the family line. My father won’t mind if I don’t produce an heir. And this badge is enough to guarantee her livelihood. What other objection could you possibly have?”

Balshan stared at him.

It lasted long enough to be uncomfortable. Then: “Hmph. Empty words mean nothing. I’ll be watching you, and I will find something to expose.” She turned away. “Whatever. Right — since you brought up being a Witch: what exactly is your ability? I’ve been watching you work, and it looks like you’re just using brute strength to carry things.”

He’d meant the question as idle curiosity. He could tell immediately that it hadn’t landed that way.

Her expression shifted — not anger, exactly. Something more complicated and less visible.

“Are you suggesting I don’t belong here?”

“No. I was only curious.” He raised his hands. Strange. I’m usually careful with what I say — when did I become so careless? Even if she is unreasonable, I don’t have to stoop to it. “Forget I asked.”

He thought she wouldn’t answer. Then, quietly, so that he almost missed it:

“My ability is to kill.”

Charms went still. “What?”

Balshan reached down and picked up a seed from the ground. She set it in her open palm. Before his eyes, it began to wither — not slowly, but at the pace of something that had been dying for weeks and only now admitted it. In less than a minute it had contracted to a dry brown pellet.

“Any living thing I touch withers like that. It doesn’t stop at plants or animals. Stone and metal are affected too, just more slowly, and the magic power cost is larger — so in practice it’s mainly used on enemies.” She let the pellet drop. “That’s why I’m not on the front line. The Witch Union controls deployment, and my ability requires physical contact. They judged the risk too great, with too few viable applications. In the end, they told me I could choose my own work — anything except combat.” She gave a short, hollow laugh. “So verbal promises aren’t worth much. Even His Majesty Roland’s.”

“That’s a lie.” The words came out flat and certain. Charms could not stand still for slanders against the King — not from anyone. “His Majesty has never broken a promise. Even the most impossible things he’s committed to have—”

He looked at her face and felt his conviction stall.

“Wait. You’ve actually met His Majesty?”

“Yes.” She flicked the withered pellet away. “The Witch Union assigns work by ability first, then asks for personal preferences, then both sides negotiate. Dusk is a good example of how that goes when a Witch’s power has clear applications. For those with abilities that have no obvious use — we go to His Majesty directly.” A pause. “He told me all abilities can and will be useful to Graycastle’s development. That there are no useless abilities.” Another pause, smaller. “I belong to the second category.”

Charms ran through the problem silently. A purely destructive ability. Physical contact required. No range, no defense, high risk to the user. He turned it over and could not find a peacetime application, which meant His Majesty must have had the same difficulty — and admitting that felt worse, somehow, than a broken promise would have.

“What did His Majesty actually tell you?”

“He said that in fifty to a hundred years, I would be able to add brilliance to visual effects and stage props.” Her lips curved — not quite a smile. “Something called extensive use of visual effects. A must-have in the industry. He also mentioned Magic Movies.” She paused. “A very clever way to explain my ability away, isn’t it? Even if he was telling the truth, it’s a matter for decades from now. And for right now, I am genuinely useless.”

The pieces settled. Charms finally understood why Dusk had stopped herself mid-sentence before.

When the Witches lived in hiding, Balshan had been the weapon — the one who could hold off pursuers, buy time, protect the rest. Then King Roland had declared that Witches no longer needed to bleed in close combat, and in one stroke, the core of her identity had been cancelled. The distance between what she had been and what she was now was not a matter of skill or will. The world had simply been reorganized around abilities unlike hers.

He knew something of that reorganization.

When he’d been transferred off the front line, he had felt the same emptiness — the specific cold of being made redundant by peace.

He watched her walk toward the platform, shoulders straight, back to him.

He had spent the week planning how to get Dusk alone, how to arrange an invitation that wouldn’t include Balshan. He’d even mapped out a route to the theater that made “accidentally” leaving a third ticket behind plausible. All of it felt, now, like something he’d planned in a different context.

He coughed twice, reached into his pocket.

“Anyway. I have two tickets for the new play tonight.”

Balshan turned her head and waited.

“But something’s come up and I don’t think I’ll make it.” He hesitated. “It’d be a shame to let them go to waste. Why don’t you take Dusk — I’m sure it’ll be better than leaving the tickets unused.”

Something crossed her face that he couldn’t quite read.

Before she could answer, the sky cracked open.

The sound was wrong — not thunder, not machinery. It was the beating of wings, and it was everywhere at once. Both of them looked up. A dark mass was moving overhead, dense enough to throw the plaza into rolling shadow. Birds — thousands of them, tens of thousands, every species mixing together in a churning current that stretched from one horizon to the other. Migratory birds moved in season, on fixed trajectories, in their own kinds. Not like this. Not desperate and tangled, all species together, moving as though something behind them had made staying impossible.

“What’s going on with them?” Charms squinted up. “Some kind of early migration?”

“Quiet.” Balshan pressed a finger to her lips. “Do you hear that?”

“I hear their wings.”

“Further than that.”

He held his breath. Beyond the flapping, beneath it, was a sound that didn’t belong to birds at all — low, turbid, sustained, like a whistle half-swallowed by distance.

His eyes went wide.

That is the warning alarm from the north.

Discussion

Suggest a change